I curse in my head a lot when I'm alone, but rarely outloud. But while
listening to Turbulence's "Secret Society" several times in my car coming to
and from work, I couldn't help but say "just shut the fuck up" over and over again.

Seriously. No more of this bullshit. It's terrible. Not every song is
terrible. The looping of a reverb-laden clip from "Puff the Magic Dragon" on
"Puff" is wellp-placed. "All I See" is a detailed and nuanced observation of
urban blight, on which Sinsere comments that all he sees are "abandoned
buildings and open fields," a particularly poignant glimmer of imagery.
Several tracks, at least at points, appropriately toe the line between
celebration and critique of the criminal lifestyle ("See where I'm from
niggas grind from sun-up to sun-up/don't sleep/thinking that they might miss
a come up . . . Education fading so they turn to the pyrex," from Pistol
Atkins' "Where I'm From.")

But, for goodness sakes, a lot of this album is terrible. And it's not just
that it's terrible. It's that it appeals to the worst parts of its listeners
- the parts that will believe that these rappers are "keeping it real"
because they are black people rapping about drug dealing, murder, and hustling.

I hate to say it because we're all a little bit racist, but I'm just not
racist enough to for this record. There are 20 rappers featured on "Secret
Society," and I just don't believe that they are drug dealing, gun-toting
hustlers. If it was easy for me to believe that most black people like to
kill people and sling crack, then I would probably believe that Turbulence
is "keeping it real," but, I'm sorry, I don't buy it.

Realize, this is not me speculating about the backgrounds of any of these
MCs. I don't know them or where they come from. But, as a collective of
artists conveying a persona, Turbulence is hard to take seriously.
Inversely, I have no idea if Jay-Z ever dealt drugs; same for Pusha T and
Malice of Clipse. But when these rappers spit about "the game," I don't
question it, not because of the color of their skin, but because of the
literary precision with which they convey the characters they embody on
their albums. It's the same reason Jay-Z likes "Scarface." It's the same
reason I'm intrigued by Eminem-as-sociopath and Mr.
Lif-as-video-game-playing-black-power-stoner-prophet. I don't know any of
these people personally, but, their rap identities are independently
compelling. Turbulence, on the other hand, makes no effort at character
development and just hopes their audience buys into stereotypes strongly
enough to believe their hype.

The same could arguably be said of Dre and Snoop on "The Chronic." I'm going
to leave that debate for another day, but what I will say is that Dre and
Snoop have two things going for them that Turbulence doesn't: 1. Dre is a
really good producer; 2. Snoop is a really good rapper. Even if their
lyrical content is sometimes backwards, their styles set them apart as
innovators. In contrast, the production on "Secret Society," is the same old
SYNTH! SYNTH! SYNTH! hooks over a rapid fire drum machine high-hat. The
rapping is just a dumber version of past gangster-rap stylings, which others
could sometimes pull off but this entourage does not.

This album is making me angry.

But perhaps I've said too much. Maybe this review is itself racist. Maybe
it's just a projection of my own stereotypes onto a few individuals. And if
readers make this complaint then I respect that. The ones who cannot accuse
me of stereotyping, however, are the members of Turbulence. They were
banking on it.